I spent ten minutes on the Assassin's Creed Wiki and it melted my brain

If you haven't been keeping up with the series I'm going to take you up to speed and make you schizophrenic

A little while ago I was looking to find something on the newly unsealed JFK documents and somehow wound up seeing an entry for John F. Kennedy on the Assassin’s Creed fan Wiki.

I couldn’t resist. I knew I shouldn’t have. I clicked.

Let’s rewind: a very, very long time ago, when I still was in high school, I played a game called Assassin’s Creed. It was a game with a simple premise—track down historical figures from the Crusades, stab them in the throat—and I remember enjoying it, albeit finding it repetitive. The game involved some conspiracy stuff about the Knights Templar, and I remember it ended with a very strange and sudden teaser involving some vague hints at a variety of conspiracies in the same vein, which included the Nasca Lines, the Eye of Providence, and references to the Mayan Long Count Calendar. Huh. Weird. Many years later, during COVID, I picked up Assassin’s Creed IV because a lot of people had told me you got to be a jolly pirate in it, and then within five minutes of playing I was having a meeting with the real-life 18th century Governor of Cuba and he was without warning explaining QAnon and extraterrestrials to me, and it was around there that I felt I was out of my depth and stopped playing, which is a surprise because the game even had a Quebecker in it, which you’d think would have been enough to keep me engaged.¹

Let me be clear: I’m an ardent Truther on many subjects, as plenty of my readers already know—I mean, one of my most popular posts is about my genuine belief that one of America’s most acclaimed writers is a serial killer. In fact, just under one tenth of my subscribers came from that article alone, so to you I say: welcome back, fellow believers.

Perhaps this is why I find Assassin’s Creed lore so obnoxious. Like so-called “MAGA Communists” who call themselves “Marxist-Leninists,” Assassin’s Creed lore feels like a farcical mutation of some part of myself and my beliefs. Or at least more farcical than I already am. Case in point, here’s what I read on the Wiki about Jack Kennedy, someone whose death I do indeed believe was the result of a conspiracy. See if you can mark the point where this version goes off the rails.

I take it Gore Vidal was leaving these parts out of his memoirs. What happened next?

In the confusion that ensued, Kennedy's driver, the CIA agent and Assassin William Greer grabbed the President's Apple of Eden. Prior to the assassination, Greer had been secretly trained by Abstergo using an Apple of Eden. Furthermore, using yet another Apple of Eden, the Templars made a "phantom" appear on a nearby hill, creating more commotion. While Greer attempted to flee with the Apple, he was stopped by fellow Assassin Alekseï Gavrani, who wanted to disrupt Boris Pash's plans. He stole the Apple from Greer and brought it to William King Harvey, unaware of Harvey's true affiliations.

…what?

That same day, Kennedy's Vice President and secret Templar Lyndon B. Johnson was initiated as President of the United States. During Johnson's presidency, the Templars were able to finally use the Apollo program to reach the Moon and retrieve the fifth Apple of Eden from its surface.

…………..what? What the fuck is an Apple of Eden? Why was one on the fucking moon?

……..what? Well what about the one on the moon?

Haha alright sure.

The thing about the Assassin’s Creed Wiki is that basically everything you read could just as easily be pictured being delivered to you like this:

Lyndon B. Johnson’s Assassin’s Creed Wiki page tells us he ramped up the Vietnam War because the war was a Templar plot, but I read the whole entry for the Vietnam War and I’m still not really sure what the Templars hoped to accomplish with that, and it gets especially confusing because Nixon was a Templar pawn and they got him to pull out of the war? Maybe they decided to put their energies elsewhere, like keeping Allende from nationalizing Chile’s natural resources, which were in the control of Templar holding companies.

Next thing I knew I was reading about the history of Russia and the Soviet Union. The Tsars were historically complex: Alexander II was assassinated by the Assassins for being in league with the Templars, then his son Alexander III was nearly also killed by an Assassin, and then his son Nicholas II was manipulated by the Templar Grigori Rasputin (who wanted the Tsar’s Staff of Eden), but then after Rasputin’s death Nicholas was pressured by the Assassins into abdicating the throne. Lenin, who had close ties to the Russian Assassins (and his brother was a member), urged the Assassins to kill Tsar Nicholas, which they didn’t, but then Templars who had infiltrated the Bolsheviks had Nicholas killed themselves because they wanted to steal the family’s Precursor Box.

…what the fuck is a Precursor Box?

Okay sure. Well apparently the Romanov family’s Precursor Box contained the genetic memories of a Chinese Assassin named Shao Jun who the Wiki tells us had big tits because she didn’t undergo chest-binding and was a concubine of the Chinese Emperor Zhu Houzhao, until he was manipulated by his eunuchs who were secretly Templars. Anyways, all of this led to Princess Anastasia becoming a quasi-Assassin under the tutelage of a friend of Lenin’s who moved to America and then got kicked out during the Palmer Raids in spite of the fact that the FBI was partially controlled by the Assassins.

After Lenin succeeded in his revolution and then later died, Stalin took control of the USSR, but little did he know his Politburo had been infiltrated by Templars, who spearheaded the Great Purge with the intention of neutralizing all of the country’s Assassins. They then got Stalin involved with their other puppets—Winston Churchill, FDR, and Adolf Hitler—in starting the Second World War, which was an attempt by the Templars to create a new world government with a single monetary system. In case this is starting to sound a bit like a certain familiar real life conspiracy theory, let me assure you that yes, it’s that one, and that as a result there is a page for the fucking Bretton Woods Conference on the fucking Assassin’s Creed Wiki which goes on to tell us that economist John Maynard Keynes was a Templar.

Yes, those glowing hyperlinked names do not lie to you, both Keynes and White have their own Wiki pages here. You know who else has one? Alan Turing, who in this universe was Keynes’ best friend. And was also a Templar. Until this happened, obviously:

In 1952, the Templars had Turing arrested for gross indecency in an effort to silence him. When this failed, the Templars killed Turing on 7 June 1954, and made it appear as if Turing had killed himself with a cyanide-laced apple, taking care to make the death seem "poetic", as the engineer "always was theatrical"

Oh wow that’s in bad taste!

Anyways, FDR and Hitler both got given Apples of Eden. I’m not really sure why the Templars would have given those out, because I thought the whole point was to keep them, but they did. Hitler actually specifically got his Apple from Henry Ford, who for the record was a Templar and was given the Apple by his fellow Templar Thomas Edison who had stolen it from the Assassin-sympathizer Nikola Tesla (go figure) who was using it to create alternating current electricity. To my understanding, the end of the war was rigged, Hitler was supposed to execute a body-double in the Führerbunker and go meet up with Churchill (actually that part sounds pretty realistic), but he got got by an Assassin. Womp womp. Hitler’s Apple was then used by the Assassins to try to go back in time in an operation called Project Rainbow and kill Baby Hitler in order to stop the war, which seems like in this universe would have been incidental considering the whole conflict was orchestrated by the Templars but sure whatever. By the way, this specific Apple also somehow helped the Chinese invent gunpowder and was played with by Mark Twain after he had helped the Assassins stop the Templars from stealing the Voynich Manuscript, which is actually a map of the world’s Seismic Temples, which are a long network of underground alien bunkers which are the real cause of the world’s earthquakes. There’s no page for the Holocaust (who woulda thunk?) but I’m going to use my deductive reasoning skills here and suggest that it was a Templar plot to kill even more Assassins. Eichmann was probably a Templar! Everyone’s always working for the Templars!

Wait… Assassin’s Creed IV’s token Quebecker!!! I never finished the game!!! Was he working for the Templars too???

Well, I mean, of course he was, everyone knows Quebec is a historic stronghold of Templar influence ever since they seized the port of Montreal, and of course he worked for Asbestos Industries or whatever the fuck its called, the modern day Boring Cubicle successors of the Templars, having traded-in tabards and longswords and imposing castles for yuccie open-concept offices in Montreal’s Peck Building. Talk about the fucking banality of evil.

What next? Oh. In spite of the marketing (and the title), Assassin's Creed Origins, which takes place in Ancient Egypt, was not actually where the story of the Assassins and the Templars begins, it’s where the story of the Assassins begin. The Templars go back even further. Do you want to know who the first Templar was? It was Cain.

Yes, that’s right, that Cain. As in “and Abel.” He was the first ever Templar and the Templar Cross is in fact the Mark of Cain. I’m serious. Of course, there’s controversy as to whether or not the Assassins actually predated even that when we consider the debate around the designation of the proto-Assassins. Who could the proto-Assassins possibly have been?

Adam and Eve.

Jesus Christ, I thought. Then it hit me. Oh no. Oh no no no no no.

GOD. DAMN IT.

Being something of a religious person² you would think I’d be offended by this but mostly I’m just numb at this point.³

I like that the Wiki tells us as a fact that Jesus did all of his miracles using ancient alien technology, but claims he only allegedly turned water into wine. Also, apparently Jesus was condemned not by the Pharisees but by the Order of the Ancients, a proto-Templar organization from Egypt, making the whole Assassin’s Creed conspiracy thread one of the few conspiracy narratives of this specific flavour to implicate the Jews less than usual. I clicked that highlighted Judas link, by the way, and you’ll be disappointed to learn that they were uncharacteristically restrained with him and didn’t align him with any of their kooky factions, he’s just Some Guy.

…

Just… Some Guy…

…

A moment of quietude lands upon me. The whir of my maniac brain stills for a moment in contemplation. Judas Iscariot, in a world where every single historical actor was bent by a conflict surrounding ancient alien apples he probably didn’t even know existed, was just a man driven by man’s vicissitudes. Greed, spite, envy. One of the only truly human beings to act upon history in a dialectic of automata playing out pre-scripted roles in a grand interplanetary drama. What a lonely existence it must have been…

We are, all of us, just Some Guy in the great Templar-Assassin Wars. Alone, bereft of purpose, caught in the crossfire of a conflict that stretches back to the dawn of time—long before we were born, and long after we’ll be gone. No secret allegiances, no grand cosmic destiny, no mass-brain-washing apples from the moon that somehow also let you travel back in time. Everything about us less than a footnote in a battle between grand factions fighting for the scraps of power left behind by ancient aliens. Sorta makes you want to stab Godfrey of Bouillon in the throat!

1. And I mean they really outdid themselves here, they got the voice right, they got the personality right, the guy even has a physiognomy carried exclusively by Quebec men, I’ve never seen my province so accurately portrayed in a piece of media this popular, it nearly brought a tear to my eye.

2. Apparently this is because of an ancient alien trident.

3. The Wiki says almost nothing about Muhammed, but please keep in mind that Ubisoft is from France, which has a… particular attitude to Muslims, and so when the lore on him drops expect it to be especially deranged.

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BROKEN BY THE IMMENSITY OF THIS SHELTERLESS KNOWLEDGE? LOOKING FOR NEW DIRECTION? TRY…